Chapter XXVII

When Lorin Armstrong descended the stairs after his interview with Mrs. Vandeleur he felt that he had secured a valuable ally.

If any one could coax from Lina the reason for her conduct it was the little gray witch, whose manner inspired and almost compelled confidence, and who, however much or little she might understand the world of spirits, was marvellously quick in finding out anything she wanted to know about matters pertaining to this earth.

It had been arranged between them that he should call at noon on the following day, by which time Mrs. Vandeleur was to have had a long interview with Lorin's recalcitrant love-lady. Had the matter rested with him the young man would have gladly waited on the doorstep of Number Twenty-one throughout the whole of that evening, or, with equal celerity, would have presented himself there before dawn on the following day. But Mrs. Vandeleur clearly was not a woman to be hurried in well-doing, and she had no intention of either detaining Lorin this evening or of putting in an appearance before her usual time on the next morning, solely because her secretary had tried to quarrel with her sweetheart.

Lorin had therefore to content himself with impressing upon her the vital importance to his very existence of a speedy reconciliation between himself and his divinity, and had then perforce to depart, full of new hopefulness, until, at the foot of the stairs, he found gleaming at him across the dimly-lighted hall the strange green eyes of Clare Cavan.

Meeting with the girl at this exact moment affected Lorin unpleasantly as an evil omen. From the artist's point of view he admired her immensely, and often hoped he might some day have time and opportunity to sketch her as Vivien tempting Merlin. She was an ideal Vivien, but that fabled lady was also a more or less sinister personage, and at this moment it clearly appeared as though mockery gleamed in Miss Cavan's cat-like eyes and echoed through her purring accents.

"Oh, Mr. Armstrong, I am so sorry you are off just as I have come back! I have never yet been able to offer you my congratulations on your engagement. It was so very sudden, you see, and Lina has said so very little about it. But perhaps I am premature?"

"Not at all," he returned, coolly. "So far as I am concerned I heartily wish my marriage with Miss Grahame could take place to-morrow."

"How perfectly sweet! But you men are all like that; you want us poor little women to scamper off to the altar without a thought of _chiffons_ and bridal costume, and frocks and shoes and gloves and those pretty things which will perhaps last us longer than all your much-vaunted affection! I've been quite longing to meet you for another reason, too. Your cousin and namesake called on us on Sunday afternoon, and I think he is perfectly delightful! So humorous and original, and so unlike the ordinary men one meets in drawing-rooms. I assure you we all found him simply irresistible! Didn't Lina tell you so?"

"I really can't recall it."

"Oh, Mr. Armstrong, I do really believe you are jealous! But I assure you Lina will never have a chance of talking to your cousin while I am about. I do so love eccentrics. And I have just been hearing the quaintest stories about him from my friends the Fitzroy-Cleavers."

Lorin winced. The cat-claws showed through the fur in that last thrust, and he felt he hated the girl and her malignant tongue.

"I am glad my cousin pleased you, Miss Cavan," he said, quietly, "and that his conversation was so well suited to your taste."

She flushed ever so slightly under his remark.

"Shall I tell you a secret?" she asked, assuming her most ingenuous and innocent air. "Women always like that type of man the best, whatever else they may pretend. There's a confession! You must go after that. But you'll find some day that I'm right."

As soon as she had closed the door upon him, Clare summoned Susan and closely cross-questioned her as to the length and other details of Lorin's visit. On these points the maid was voluble and precise, having supplemented her knowledge at first-hand by listening at the library keyhole.

"It wasn't much that I could catch, miss--I was that afraid of misses finding me out and setting her spirits after me, or of cook coming up and down stairs. But something misses is going to do for Mr. Armstrong; and he's to come round about it at twelve o'clock to-morrow. Most likely misses is going to try to make friends between them again--don't you think so, miss?"

"I can't tell, Susan. But it's very interesting, isn't it? Quite like a novel. And you shall have that green-velvet hat of mine."

Clare was intensely curious to know the rights of this quarrel between her rival and Lorin Armstrong. "Pumping" Laline was never any use; but by adroit flattery and artful questions she could sometimes extract information from her aunt, even though the latter resented her intrusion in the study during working hours. But, with the secretary in tears in her room, Clare decided she might risk it, and she accordingly sped lightly to the study door, and, after an admonitory tap, burst in with a great appearance of spontaneity.

"Oh, auntie," she exclaimed, "do let me run in for a few minutes' chat! Why, where is Lina?"

"She is ill--a headache or something. Pray don't flutter, Clare! Fluttering gets on my nerves."

"I wonder what is the matter with Lina?" Clare remarked, taking a seat and slowly removing her hat. "Have you noticed how strangely she has altered since her engagement?"

"All girls alter when they get engaged," said her aunt, maliciously. "Joy turns their heads, I suppose."

"I don't think it's joy in Lina's case," pursued Clare, shaking her head doubtfully. "No; it seems to me she has something on her mind."

"What do you mean?"

By her aunt's tone Clare divined she was on the right tack.

"Well, do you know, Aunt Cissy," she said, with confidential mystery, "I have some reason for supposing that Lina knows of a secret barrier between her and Mr. Armstrong--that is why she is trying to break with him--before he finds it out, I mean."

"Where did you get that idea from?" asked Mrs. Vandeleur, sharply.

"Well, I would rather not say who told me in so many words; but I have suspected the thing before," Clare went on, feeling her way, and wondering whether she was going to stumble on the truth. "Of course you know how people will talk, and this is the sort of thing they say--that it is quite too reckless of Mr. Armstrong, in his position, to offer marriage to a girl about whose antecedents he knows absolutely nothing at all. Why, even you know very little more, do you, auntie? And Lina is twenty, and has had to earn her living somehow since she was a child. And of course she is perfectly lovely, in that thin ethereal style that some people rave about. She is so oddly reticent, too, about her past--haven't you noticed it? But, now that she is going to make such a splendid and unexpected marriage with such an extremely charming man as Mr. Armstrong, no doubt it all comes back to her. She is very religious, you know, and very likely would rather give him up than be married under false pretences, poor girl!"

To the whole of this elaborate speech, evolved bit by bit from Clare's inner consciousness, Mrs. Vandeleur listened, with her brilliant hazel eyes peering intently through her glasses upon her niece's face. But as the girl finished, the little gray lady rose from her chair in her wrath, every fold of her soft brocade bristling with indignation.

"Do you venture to insinuate," she inquired in icily deliberate tones, "that my friend and companion and fellow-worker hesitates to become an honourable gentleman's wife because her past career has rendered her unworthy to fill that position?"

Clare was considerably taken aback; but she resolved to stick to her guns.

"I certainly meant that," she answered, feeling in her own heart that after all she had probably hit upon something very like the truth.

"Then, if these are your opinions--and they are, after all, only such as I should expect from you--let me tell you that you are not fit to take my white-souled Lina by the hand! I know every secret of her heart, and there is not one thought hidden there which would not shame you by its purity!"

"I would not disturb your belief in Lina for the world," observed her niece, a little red spot of anger forming itself in the whiteness of her cheeks; "but, on a subject like this, we may each keep our own opinion, may we not? I myself am very fond of Lina."

"That is not true! You hate her, and are bitterly envious of her!"

"I! Envious of her!"

The white eyelids and yellow lashes were scornfully lowered over the angry eyes.

"I wonder, Aunt Cissy, that with your gifts and your genius you are so easily deceived! I am not strait-laced, as you know; but, really, I have never cared to make a companion of Lina Grahame. She has, I don't doubt, some very good reason of her own for letting Mr. Armstrong escape from her clutches."

"Would you like me to prove to your face that you are lying?" Mrs. Vandeleur inquires, in a white heat of anger and excitement.

"Unfortunately that is impossible--isn't it? You could only get Lina's word, and I don't quite think I should accept that under the circumstances."

"You shall hear it in a form which you cannot fail to believe!" the little lady cried in triumph. "I will put Lina into a hypnotic sleep, and she shall answer me as she would answer her own soul. With her own lips she shall, in your presence, clear her good name from the foul slur which you, in your mean jealousy, have cast upon it. And this shall be done this very evening--here, before your eyes!"

"Dear auntie, pray don't excite yourself!" Clare urged. "Such an ordeal would be unfair to the girl. I really meant nothing."

"I have made up my mind," said the little sibyl, as she sharply rang the silver hand-bell on the table before her.

In Lorin's interests she had already decided to submit Lina to hypnotic influence in order to extract from her the entire truth with regard to her present plans, and she was genuinely glad of the opportunity of proving to her niece how undeserved were her reflections on her rival.

For Mrs. Vandeleur had no trace of doubt but that Laline, when put to the test, would triumphantly prove her spotless innocence in a manner which must convince even the evil-minded and unbelieving Clare. She was revelling in her favourite part of Fate's representative. Lorin should be made happy, Clare confounded, and Laline vindicated by one and the same process.

"Hide yourself!" she signed to her niece imperatively. "Lina must believe herself alone with me. Turn out the lamp in the inner room, and conceal yourself behind that Japanese screen. When she is unconscious, I will signal you to come near."

"Ask Miss Grahame if she will kindly join me here at once, Susan," was the mandate given to that young woman on her appearance in answer to the summons.

"I beg your pardon, ma'am, but I think Miss Grahame's poorly and is lying down."

"Do as I tell you! Ask her to come to me now!"

A few minutes later, almost as pale as the white dress she had donned to please her employer, Laline entered the room. Suffering had made her super-sensitive; she seemed instantly to be aware of an inimical presence, for she glanced nervously about her before advancing towards Mrs. Vandeleur.

"I--I thought Clare was with you!" she stammered.

"I have just sent her away. I want to talk to you. My dear child, why this avoidance of me? I assure you I am beginning to be hurt. To think that I should have to wait to learn the news of your engagement from the lips of others----"

"Don't--oh, please don't!"

The girl pressed both hands to her burning forehead. She had wept herself into a weak hysterical state, but she was anxious not to break down.

"I meant to write to you to-night," she went on presently, more calmly. "I didn't feel quite equal to talking to you. During the past few days I have lived through several lives of pain and thought, and I feel weak and worn out. Dear Mrs. Vandeleur, you have been so wonderfully kind to me that I wish I could tell you all the truth! The one thing I must tell you is that I must leave your house to-morrow."

"Leave me to-morrow! Why, where are you going?"

"I must not tell you--I hardly know myself yet. But it must be somewhere where no one I have met lately will ever find me. I have to begin life all over again."

"But, my child, what does all this mean? first, I am astonished by hearing of your engagement with Mr. Armstrong, knowing, as I did, that you were not free to marry; next, you refuse to see the poor young man, and worry him until he is nearly mad by your sudden and capricious coldness; and, finally, you walk in here, with red eyes and white cheeks, and tell me you are going to the other end of the world to-morrow. What can it all mean?"

"I cannot tell you. It has all been a terrible mistake. But, if you believe in me and care for me at all, dear--dear Mrs. Vandeleur, put no obstacle in the way of my going, and never let Lorin or any one know where I have taken refuge. Don't ask me to tell even you, but let me pass out of all your lives within the next few hours, and try to always think the best you can of me."

Just for one instant the thought flashed through Mrs. Vandeleur's brain that perhaps, after all, Clare's suspicions might not be altogether without foundation. Laline's mental attitude seemed hardly consistent with perfect innocence. But she loyally hated to entertain the doubt, and held out her little hands impulsively towards her _protégée_.

"Come here, my poor, dear, pale child!" she cried. "Put your head in my lap--so--and let me charm away your headache with my fingers. No--don't cry any more! These love-affairs are infinitely wearing, I know. There; let me touch your eyelids and charm away your tears! Is that better?"

"Much better!"

Laline spoke drowsily. She had flown to her friend, deeply moved by her sudden display of tenderness and sympathy, and had unsuspectingly knelt at her feet, weeping tears of gratitude. Yielding herself thus readily to the magic of Mrs. Vandeleur's touch, she became, in her unnerved and broken condition of mind, the most susceptible subject possible to hypnotic influence.

Even while she still spoke her eyes became fixed and vacant in their gaze. Still the little lady's fingers swept in slow caressing touches about her brow and eyelids. A deep sigh quivered through the girl's parted lips, and her head fell heavily forward on Mrs. Vandeleur's knees.

"Clare! Quick! Help me to lay her in this chair. Move away and let me place my hand on her brow--so!"

Pale and inert as a dead thing Laline lay. Clare drew a little on one side and held her breath with excitement. Then, through the perfect stillness of the room, Mrs. Vandeleur's sweet voice sounded, speaking low, in slow distinct tones.

"Lina, can you hear me?"

A faint quiver passed over the still face; then the voice came as from a long way off--

"Yes."

"Do you love Lorin Armstrong?"

"Yes."

"Shall you marry him?"

"No."

"Why have you broken your engagement?"

"Because I am already married."

"Married!" burst from Clare's lips in amazement.

"Silence!" exclaimed her aunt, imperatively. Then, turning again to Laline, she asked slowly--

"What is the name of your husband?"

A pause, and then softly, but with perfect distinctness, came the words--

"Wallace Armstrong."

"Not Wallace Armstrong--Lorin's cousin? Can you mean him?" cried Mrs. Vandeleur, in horror.

"Yes."

"When did you marry him?"

"More than four years ago."

"Tell me your name before you married."

"Laline Garth."

"Good heavens! But he thinks you dead. Does he or any one know or guess the truth?"

"No one."

Clare drew a long breath. The discovery meant everything to her, and the one idea in her mind was to communicate the precious secret in the right quarter.

A faint sigh and a fluttering of the eyelids from Laline made Mrs. Vandeleur bend anxiously over her prostrate form; and in the slight diversion thus afforded Clare slipped noiselessly from the room.